


Nocturnal

by orphan_account



Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, It mentions diseases at one point, M/M, This is Welcome to Hell after all, and uh, but no actual death, but nothing really graphic, death mention, little bit of angst i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-26 00:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7552387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon's sleep habits are the stuff of nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nocturnal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My sister](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+sister).



> Inspired by my sister, who is literally a real life, genderbended version of Jonathan Combs. Thank you to her for teaching me the meaning of friendship and the fact that Jon spells his name without an h. Well. With only 1 h.

_“Of all the creatures of this world, he is most at home in the night. Like a **vampire** , he shies away from the sun, hissing at its admonition of fiery destruction. They say he is so revolted by the light, so sensitive to its heat that his hair, after a mere five seconds of exposure, was bleached by the light… For all eternity.”_

_“But in the night… He is the terror **within everyone’s hearts!** His eyes can freeze you with a single glare! With bloodshot eyes, he can see into your soul! He can have a staring contest with an unblinking demon… And win, his opponent too afraid to continue.”_

_He… **Is…**_

“Would you knock it off, Sock?”

Sock’s whole form drooped in mid-air, and he groaned like a disappointed puppy. “I wouldn’t _say_ anything about it if you weren’t brushing your teeth at 3:00 p.m. You didn’t even let me get to the good part…”

Jonathan Combs, Near-Literal Night Owl and Possible Vampire, stood with a clump of knotted hair that resembled a small ecosystem and a posture that would make a stiff-upper-lipped nobleman lose all color in his face and faint at the sight of it. He was, in a word, a mess, but at least he was brushing his teeth.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Um… Sleep during the night? Like a normal person?”

Jon scoffed. “’Like a normal person’ says the literal ethereal demon.”

“Okay, you _might_ have a point there—but you can totally do it! Look, all that you have to do is fix your schedule. If you stay awake a full 30 hours or so, you’ll fall asleep at the right time and wake up the next morning! Schedule fixed!”

“Wow, Sock. I’m impressed. You finally came up with a plan that might _actually_ kill me. Besides, it’s summer. It’s not like it matters when I sleep.”

With that, Jon left the restroom, considering the conversation to be done.

“You won’t be saying that when school starts,” said Sock, who didn’t quite care about what Jon considered done.

“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it. Hell, I’ll burn it _now_. Consider this conversation burnt to ash.”

As Jon retreated to the kitchen, Sock called after him, “That metaphor doesn’t even make sense!!!”

Sock folded his arms and pouted. There had to be a way to keep Jon awake for longer or get him to sleep earlier. If only, he thought, he had telekinesis or pyromancy—y’know, the cool stuff that demons are _supposed_ to have. Those tools would be invaluable in his quest. All that he really had was…

A wicked grin broke out across Sock’s face.

The grin stayed for a majority of the day, but Jon ignored it. The wickedness looked more like gentle amusement. He didn’t recognize the wickedness until that night—or, that morning, depending on how one looks at it. It was so deep into the night that one’s eyes assumed it to be light.

“So, Jon, what’s your favorite plague?”

Sock hung above Jon’s bed, lying on his stomach as if looking down from a bunk bed towards the lump of lackadaisical meat below himself.

“… My what?”

“Y’know, the three plagues! Bubonic, Pneumonic, Septicemic—“

“Sock, why are you asking me this at, like, 6:00 in the morning?”

“Because I want to know your opinion! Everyone’s always talking about the Bubonic plague, but Pnue and Sept don’t get any credit! The Pneumonic has a 100% mortality rate if it’s not immediately treated, but nooooo, let’s talk about the stupid bubo-disease all day. Who the heck calls an inflamed lymph node a ‘bubo’ anyway?”

Jon sighed. “… The Bubonic was still cool. Y’know… Rats and stuff.”

“You like rats? Yeah, rats are awesome. I had a rat once, and—well, _that_ didn’t go very well, but—“

“Sock? Seriously. What’s the deal?”

“… People usually don’t like rats because they’re bigger than mice, but—“

“Sock.” Jon had that serious tone in his voice that he almost never had. It made Sock feel something close to crawling skin minus the skin to crawl.

“Well, you can’t sleep if I just keep talking to you, right?”

Jon sat up. “You’re seriously going to try to keep me up until sunset just by _talking_?”

Sock shrugged. “Hey, it’s worth a shot.”

Jon opened his mouth to say something, closed it, glared, and collapsed into bed, lying on his side, pulling his blanket to his neck and his pillow around his head and over his ears.

“Ugh—no!” Sock dove down, shoved his head through Jon’s pillow and just outside his ear, and said, “Stay awake!!”

The sheer closeness of the voice made Jon bolt up again and nearly toss his pillow. He glared at the demon who now floated in front of him. 

Sock said, “Why are you so stubborn?”

“Why are _you_ so obsessed with my sleep?”

“Because—because—I don’t know! Maybe I actually care about you!”

A beat.

The silence that pursued was tangible. It smelt like cold sweat; it was malleable in the way that bed foam is malleable to someone with the strength of a teddy bear.

“Wow, Sock."

It only added to the silence.

“You really, really suck at killing me.”

Sock descended to Jon’s bed and crossed his legs. “Yeah. I know.”

And so the silence fell.

“I’m sorry,” Sock continued.

“What’s there to be sorry about?”

“I dunno. I just _am_.”

“People aren’t _just_ anything, Sock.”

“Oh, look at you, getting all philosophical.” His tone was teasing, but it was subdued by the silence’s residue.

“I’m the one that should be sorry. You kind of have a point about the sleep thing.”

“You can’t help it. You’re practically nocturnal.”

A little laugh. “Yeah. That about sums it up.”

A moment of staring at the bedsheets.

“I guess,” Jon said, “I stay up because everyone else is asleep.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it. Parents. Schools. Teachers. They can boss me around when the sun is up, but this is my time. No responsibilities. No… _Rules_. Nothing stopping me from being me. Besides, all the silence, the darkness, the moon—it’s all just sorta… Comforting. Y’know what I mean?”

Sock, eyes wide, couldn’t respond.

“… Probably not. Probably just the night getting to me.”

“No, no, it totally makes sense!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! If anything, it makes more sense than some of the stuff you say during the day!”

That got a snort out of Jonathan Combs. “Being nocturnal has its perks.”

A little ray of light snuck through the window. All at once, Jon felt the weight of morning on his shoulders and eyelids. He placed his pillow haphazardly at the head of his bed and collapsed onto it. It was as if he had remembered how tired he was. “Thanks… Sock…”

And in an instant, he was out cold.

Sock sat in amazement for a moment, wondering how he could fall to sleep so quickly before he realized—of course. This was Jonathan Combs, Likely Vampire. With a grin, he settled in next to Jon.

He waited. He felt nothing of the sun’s young rays, but he knew that, if he waited for long enough, he would feel _something_ , so long as he didn’t move. He had been practicing this for weeks. Stay still, and forget about the lack of gravity, lack of mass, lack of the feeling of fabric or fluff or bed foam. Forget…

Eventually, he felt it.

His theory of Jonathan’s vampirism was disproven there and then, for no vampire in history had ever radiated the warmth that Jon did right then. It was like being wrapped in a real blanket without the weight. It was like the gentle heat rising from a cup of hot cocoa on an apathetically cold day. It was… Unlike anything Sock had felt in such a long time.

Sock smiled, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.


End file.
